Characteristic of Instagram according to the associative experiment: experience of interpretation

Social networks are developing the function of mass informing the population, becoming a kind of “people's” media, taking a leading role in informing Internet users. This defines the statement of the problem within the boundaries of the analysis undertaken, the purpose of which is to find out the content of the attitude towards Instagram - one of the most popular social networks. The scientific basis of the research is formed by works devoted to professional and ethical standards in modern media and social networks, as well as linguistic works developing the methodology of the associative experiment. The research material was the results of a chain associative experiment (September 2020, Krasnoyarsk; respondents were Instagram users, aged 20 to 45). As a result, the characteristics of the Instagram social network were obtained and interpreted according to the data of the linguistic associative experiment. The received reactions record the attitude of Internet users to this social network as to mass media. These reactions characterize Instagram in three aspects: parameters of its connection with the mass audience (accessibility, trust, unreliability); formally linguistic qualities of content (slang, jargon, illiteracy); its content concerning the main aspects of human being - physical, mental and social. The final conclusions are determined as follows. The specificity of the subjective attitude towards this social network is a large number of evaluative reactions that are opposite in sign. Cruelty / aggression as qualifying characteristics of Instagram content, together with its formal language features - illiteracy, profanity, slang and jargon - are clearly negative. At the same time, in the group consciousness, Instagram is a mass media that provides a wide variety of meaningful information, causing the natural interest of users. This is related to the fact that the negative characteristics are compensated by a large number of positive reactions: more than 50 % of them have a positive assessment (from accessibility to beauty and culture).